


Broken to Bridle

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Duty, F/M, Family, Father & Daughter - Freeform, Gen, Marriage, Some Canon-Typical Sexism, Weddings, happiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-04 09:02:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14016843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Margarry wants to marry Owen.





	Broken to Bridle

**Author's Note:**

> Based on some quasi-canon from Tamora Pierce.

Broken to Bridle

“I want to marry him.” Margarry’s words were a declaration clear to Wyldon as the chiming of wedding bells over a temple where a couple exchanged vows and received blessings. That she was choosing to discuss her marriage in the kennels after she had spent an hour demonstrating to him all the tricks she had taught the dogs born this year shouldn’t have surprised him because they had always had their most pivotal conversations in the kennels comforted by fur and protected by claw. Yet the revelation did shock him. 

Wyldon stared at his daughter—a strong, spirited seventeen—and incongruously saw her as a girl of six with the uneven grin that came from half her milk teeth falling out while her adult teeth grew out of her gums at ragged intervals. When she was six, she had told him she would never marry. 

( “Eiralys says I have to wear flowers braided into my hair.” Margarry had pouted as she petted an elkhound puppy crawling on her knees, harboring under the misconception that it was a lapdog rather than a fierce future hunter. 

“You’re the flower girl,” Wyldon had reminded her, concealing his amusement at her aversion to flowers behind a stern mask since it would not due to spoil her. “It’s one of your responsibilities to wear flowers in your hair if the bride wishes it.” 

“Mother says I must wear anything the bride chooses for me if I’m in her wedding party.” Margarry had wrinkled her nose.

“Your mother is always right about such matters.” Wyldon had tapped her nose to prompt her to stop wrinkling it. “There you have it.” 

“Eiralys wants me to wear pink, Father.” Margarry’s brown eyes—so like his own—had widened with the horror he saw on her sisters’ faces when they were confronted with a spider. 

“Pink is a very traditional color for flower girls to wear.” Wyldon had curled a ringlet of Margarry’s amber hair around his finger. “It’ll look beautiful with your hair.” 

“I don’t want to wear pink.” Margarry had twisted out of his touch. 

“On your sister’s wedding day, everything must be about what she wants.” Wyldon had paused before adding, hoping to cheer his sulking daughter, “When it’s your wedding day, everything will be as you want it.” 

Margarry’s scowl had only deepened. Trying to tug a smile from her stubborn lips, Wyldon tried again, “You can have the bridesmaids and your flower girl carry puppies instead of bouquets on your special day.” 

He had thought that would make Margarry happy since she loved dogs as much as he did, but she had only snorted like an irascible horse. “I don’t want to get married, Father. I’m not Eiralys.”) 

When she was six, she had spoken so definitively of her future, as if it were a road with every milestone already marked for her, and she did the same now that she was seventeen. There was no need for Wyldon to ask whom she was declaring that she wanted to marry. After all, it would have taken a blind man to miss the letters she swapped with Owen while he was at war, the moments they stole together in the stables and the kennels, and the way they laughed over books, their heads an inch apart by the flickering fire. 

Wyldon had always feared that his youngest daughter, who had inherited his and Vivenne’s willfulness instead of just their dutifulness as his other three girls had, would never find a man who loved her for her strength. It was a father’s lot to fret about the marriage prospects of his daughters, he had learned long ago. With breathtaking Eiralys, his worry had been that no man would understand her beauty was far more than skin deep. For clever Sunarine, it was the sinking sensation that she would never find a man who would regard her wits as anything less than intimidating. For sweet Cathrea, it was the conviction that she was too pure for any man, and the relief of her recognizing that herself and consecrating her life to the Goddess. 

Margarry had been the only daughter with whom he had ever shared his fears for her. 

(She had been ten and resisting what she melodramatically termed her exile to the convent. Scratching under the chin of a wolfhound called Intrepid—tradition maintained that an animal named for a virtue would come to embody that noble trait—Wyldon had commented when she took a breath in the midst of her rant about never wanting to leave the stables and kennels of Cavall, “I worry that we’ll never find a man strong enough not to be scared away by your willfulness, Margarry. This tirade isn’t befitting of a lady. That is why you must go to the convent to be properly educated as a gentlewoman.” 

“I don’t want to marry a man weak enough to be scared of my strength.” Margarry’s chin had lifted truculently. “In fact, I don’t want to marry at all. I’ve explained that to you before, Father.” 

“All women wish to marry at some point.” When Intrepid rolled over, Wyldon had rubbed at his exposed belly. “Except those who dedicate their lives to serving the Goddess, but given your fervent desire to avoid the convent, I doubt you’ll experience such a holy calling.” 

“Most women don’t want to marry!” Margarry’s shout had startled the dogs wrapped around her feet, and tears had welled in her eyes. “They only marry because their fathers make them. First their fathers ship them off to the convent to break them to bridle. Then their fathers marry them off like brood mares.” 

“That’s crass, Margarry.” Wyldon, not approving of her tendency to indulge in rudeness when she dissolved into hysterics, fixed her with a severe glower he hoped would freeze her tears. 

“I don’t care if it’s crass. It’s true.” Margarry’s tears hadn’t frozen. They had started to stream down her face. “You’re forcing me to go to the convent against my will, and in a few years, you’ll make me marry against my will. I’ve read this story before. I know how it ends, Father.” 

“Hush.” Wyldon had cupped Margarry’s cheek and addressed her as if she were a skittish horse who required calming rather than a weeping girl who needed soothing. Relating to animals had always come more naturally to him than connecting to people, even his own flesh and blood. “I haven’t made any of your sisters marry against their will, and I won’t make you marry against your will either. You must go to the convent to be instructed as a gentlewoman. That is not up for debate, but that is a matter of education, not marriage. None of this is cause for needless dramatics, my girl.”)

Seven years later, and the wildness Wyldon had feared would make her unmarriageable—doomed to a life of loneliness that would make any woman hysteric—was why Owen, who was even more incorrigible than her, loved her. They were two of a kind in their untamable spirit, and that notion disquieted him as much as it eased his nerves. 

“At least the boy’s half broken to bridle,” muttered Wyldon as if his consent made a difference when it had always been his daughters who had selected their husbands. It was, after all, his daughters who were getting married, not him. 

“He is, Father.” Margarry was radiant and proud as if it were her wedding day. Wyldon prayed Owen would always make her that happy. “But by me, not by you.” 

Wyldon grunted. He couldn’t deny that she played Owen as deftly as she did her harp strings. 

“Has he spoken to you of marriage?” Wyldon asked instead. It was proper, of course, for a suitor to address the father before the daughter about marriage, but Owen had never been one for following etiquette or even being aware of its existence. 

“No, and he won’t unless you give him permission.” Margarry emitted a long-suffering sigh. “He respects you too much to do otherwise, I believe.” 

“A young man can never have too much respect for his knightmaster or his father-in-law.” Wyldon shrugged, far less distressed by that particular situation than Margarry. 

“What great scholar offered those pearls of wisdom to the world?” Margarry arched an eyebrow. 

“I did.” Wyldon returned the gesture and went on crisply, “I’ll speak to the boy once he’s knighted, but I won’t have you distracting him before his Ordeal.” 

“Do you think I could ever be a distraction to Owen, Father?” Margarry was as innocent as a serpent lurking in grass to strike at the heels of the unwary. 

“I’m serious, Margarry.” Wyldon massaged his temples. Her flippancy about marriages and Ordeals that could destroy promising squires gave him a headache. 

“Me too.” Margarry draped her arms around his shoulders like a cloak. “I’m always serious about Owen.” 

“Is that intended to be a consolation to me?” Wyldon stopped massaging his temples to glare at his youngest daughter more effectively. “Dutiful daughters are supposed to be a consolation to their fathers as old age approaches.” 

“You aren’t so old yet, Father, and I love you.” Margarry kissed his cheek gently as a whisper. “Is that enough consolation for you?”


End file.
